When I hear than an editor is also a writer I'm always more curious about their work than about anyone elses. An editor should know and avoid the common mistakes, be more 'clued-in', and generally be able to see the good and bad in a manuscript. So in the interests of full-disclosure, since I've spent the last year reading and editing and giving opinion on all your work, I thought I would do a little sharing of my own. This is a short extract from the first chapter of the novel I currently have on submission to agents.
He set the receiver down and aligned the phone with the edges of the small side table, wiping a few errant motes of dust from the thick-varnished fake mahogany surface. Marius stared at the inhabitants of his sparse apartment, their blithe taunts cut deeper today, small verbal nicks, like those received by careless shaving stabbed at him from all sides. This was not uncommon, Marius had woken up to them, left for work with their words dancing in his ears, come home to them and struggled to sleep each night for the over a year with nothing to break his routine. So, in an inconceivable moment of spontaneity, Marius took up his jacket and dashed out of the flat before another barb could reach him.
Marius went to a bar. This was the first and only repeat of an act of peer pressure from his eighteenth birthday. He assumed, through its glorification by the media, that this was ‘the thing to do’ when the day had shit on you so hard that only neat alcohol and anonymous company could dig you out. He entered the first establishment he came across and, seeing the Friday night rush, resolved to leave immediately. Turning to flee, he was blocked by a team of loose-suited, sun-blushed city-types, forcing him further into the throng of after-work revellers and up to the bar. He was sardined between the three-deep crowd of money-waving patrons and the hulking stock-market-in-the-week-ruggers-on-the-weekend louts behind him.
Panic was rising. Marius could feel the stale beer-tainted breath on his face, burning into his nostrils and watering his eyes. His shoulders were touching his ears and his made-in-Taiwan canvas shoes offered no protection from the Italian calf-skin loafers intent on crushing them. An almighty roar from behind and the horde surged forward. Smelling it before feeling it, the acid tinge of spilt alcohol covered his left shoulder. Cigarette ash stuck to the spillage and its owner came within millimetres of his eye. The nicotine smog swirled above him in a demonic haze. The ceiling disappeared, the floor disappeared, the people around him melded into one fleshy mound and Marius’ vision blurred.
Desperate not to collapse surrounded by these oblivious thugs, Marius employed his elbows, tucked his head down and barged his way free to a chorus of disapproval.
‘Oi mate, calm down!’ a rotund fellow in an army jacket shoved him back but Marius persisted.
‘You wanna stop that mate,’ a meaty hand gripped his hunched shoulder.
Marius’ mouse whisper apology did nothing to stem the tide of drunken anger soon to be directed at his torso and face.
‘You wanna learn some manners son,’ Marius now noticed that covering the man’s head, in place of hair, was the wide, stretched skin of a scar.
‘You looking at something son?’ the man’s tone had turned sinister. Marius tore his vision from the torn scalp to a pair of ferocious baby blues.
‘I think you oughta come outside with me, eh? I’ll gi’yuh something to look at, ay?’
Marius’ blood turned to ice. He’d never been in a fight before. What were the rules? Should they exchange insurance information beforehand?
The squat bulldog was ushering him to the door, the man's hand was carved out of wood, impossible to wriggle free. Marius’ protests went unnoticed or unheard.
‘Teach you ta stare won’t I ay?’
The bulldog’s right hand was on the door handle, the other still vice-like on Marius’ shoulder. Shit. Marius couldn’t fight. Marius did not like confrontation. Marius was a pacifist. Oh shit the door was opening, the dog was pushing him outside. Who was he kidding? Pacifist? Marius Arnold was a coward. One foot out the door. Shit. They say that a guy’s first fight is a defining moment, that it turns you from a boy to a man because you can’t be a man until you’ve felt the fist of another man break your cheekbone. Marius did not give this any weight but he did wonder in this moment if, had he been beaten to a bloody mass during adolescence, he would not now be shitting himself quite so liberally. Both his feet were now outside the safe confines of the pub. Shit.
Then, an angel in khaki.
